How often do you (and your parent poster) find yourself stuck with 'vendor kernels' on these machines a la arm devices? I've tried twice to rehabilitate Chrome

How often do you (and your parent poster) find yourself stuck with 'vendor kernels' on these machines a la arm devices? I've tried twice to rehabilitate Chromebooks; in the first instance I was stymied by lack of mainline support for the chipset involved, and in the second case there was no mainline support for the soldered-in broadcom wifi. Is this common, or is there a trick to avoiding buying encumbered hardware?